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Black Market Adoptions |
A host of institutions seeking a place for adoption of children who were born out of wedlock engages in similar dubious practices. These included private maternity home, family welfare agencies, hospital social services departments, state court probation department, child protective agencies and legal aid societies. Doctors and lawyers facilitated private non-agencies or independent adoptions, acting as liasons between childless couples and unmarried mothers trying to avoid social stigma.
Studies conducted in Massachusettes and New Jersey during the 1920's revealed that only one-quarter to one-third of the children adopted in those states were placed by state-licenced child-protecting institutions. Many parents succeded in circumventing all institutions, whether licensed by the state or not, by advertising in newspapers that their infants were available for adoption. Adding to this were the commercial maternity homes and baby farms that sold infants born out of wedlock to childless couples.
A number of private adoption agencies first sprang up in New York City. One the first was the Alice Chapin Adoption Nursery which was started in 1911 by the wife of the prominent pediatrician, Dr Henry Swight Chapin. Five years later, Mrs Louise Wise, the wife of the famous Reform rabbi Stephen Wise, sought assistance from three wealthy members of her husband's congregratin to expand and systematize her ad hoc adoption activities. This eventually became the largest Jewish adoption agency in New York City, called the Louise Wise Services.
In Chicago several wealthy businessmen donated the money that permitted Mrs Florence Dahl Walruth to purchase the residence that became The Cradle Society.
A 1917 study, commissioned by Chicago's Juvenile Protective Association, investigated adoptions and confirmed the worst fears of Progressive reformers. It was found that there was "a regular commercialized business of child placing being carried on in the city of Chicago; that there were many maternity hospital's which made regular charges. . . for disposing of unwelcome children; and that there were also doctors and other individual's who took advantage of the unmarried mother willing to pay any amount of money to dispose of the child. No name, address, or reference was required to secure the custody of a child from these people."
Notorious adoption mills like The Cradle Society of Illinois, The Willows of Kansas, and the Veil maternity Home of West Virginia accepted payment from the adoptive parents upon receipt of a child, ignored commonly accepted social work practices and provided inadequate safeguards for everyone directly involved in the adoption. The Cradle Society, for example, shunned the primary tool of professional social workers, individualized casework. It accepted without queston the decision of the unwed mother to relinquish and made no effort to ascertain the decision was appropriate for the circumstances. It did not investigate prospective adoptive parents or make a study of the child's development, refused to inform the adoptive parents of the child's family history and made no provision for a probationary period after placement to supervise the child.
This activity is one that occurred all over America and in Canada. Some of the more well-known baby-mills or places where black market adoptions occurred are listed below and where found more information.
(The previous information is being presented under the fair use doctrine of the US Copyright Law. Thank you. This information has been gathered from: Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption by E. Wayne Carp, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusettes & London, England (c)1998. ISBN: 0-674-79668-3)
Hightower Black Market Babies of Texarkana, Texas
Story of "Cole Babies".
The Cole Baby Registry.
Hick's Adoptees.
Hick's Birth Clinic Registry.
Tennesee Black Market Adoption Information. Information on Georgia Tann Adoption Agency.
Black Market Adoptees Registry.
Butterbox Baby Story.
Ideal Maternity Home.
Montreal Black Market Babies.
Bessie Bernard Black Market Baby Broker.
The Veil-News From The Nursery. a look at the past-1921